Big Cola Goes Back
To Its Patent-Medicine Roots

By

Holman W. Jenkins Jr.

Updated Nov. 8, 2000 12:51 a.m. ET

J ust when you thought you had enough snake oil for one election year, now comes word that the granddaddy of "functional" beverages, Gatorade, is in play. Last week its parent company, Quaker Oats, spurned a $14 billion bid from Pepsi. Quaker's stock price jumped on the news.

The future apparently belongs to soft drinks that "do something." Virtually the entire beverage world has stopped whatever it was doing to pursue "nutraceuticals," the notion that food and drink will be peddled in the...